http://iht.com/articles/2005/10/07/news/qaeda.php

Qaeda No. 2 warns his chief in Iraq
By Douglas Jehl and Thom Shanker The New York Times

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2005


WASHINGTON The second-ranking leader of Al Qaeda has warned the top militant in Iraq that attacks on civilians and videotaped executions committed by his followers threaten to jeopardize the broader extremist cause, a senior U.S. official says.

The warning, from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was in a 6,000-word letter, dated early in July, that was obtained by U.S. forces conducting counterterrorism operations in Iraq, the official said in a briefing.

Zawahiri said that Iraq had become "the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era" but that Zarqawi's forces should keep in mind that it was only a stepping stone toward a broader victory for militant Islam across the Middle East.

"The mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal," Zawahiri said in the letter, according to a partial translation provided by the official, who declined to provide verbatim translations of anything more than three sentences from the document. Under the ground rules for the briefing, the official cannot be identified.

The official said Zawahiri had also warned that Zarqawi's forces should concentrate their attacks on Americans rather than on Iraqi civilians, and should refrain from the kind of gruesome beheadings and other executions that have been posted on Al Qaeda Web sites.

The American official would not say when or how U.S. forces obtained the communication, or whether it was in electronic or printed form. But the official said he had "the highest confidence of its authenticity," which he said had been verified by "multiple sources over an extended period of time."

WASHINGTON The second-ranking leader of Al Qaeda has warned the top militant in Iraq that attacks on civilians and videotaped executions committed by his followers threaten to jeopardize the broader extremist cause, a senior U.S. official says.

The warning, from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was in a 6,000-word letter, dated early in July, that was obtained by U.S. forces conducting counterterrorism operations in Iraq, the official said in a briefing.

Zawahiri said that Iraq had become "the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era" but that Zarqawi's forces should keep in mind that it was only a stepping stone toward a broader victory for militant Islam across the Middle East.

"The mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal," Zawahiri said in the letter, according to a partial translation provided by the official, who declined to provide verbatim translations of anything more than three sentences from the document. Under the ground rules for the briefing, the official cannot be identified.

The official said Zawahiri had also warned that Zarqawi's forces should concentrate their attacks on Americans rather than on Iraqi civilians, and should refrain from the kind of gruesome beheadings and other executions that have been posted on Al Qaeda Web sites.

The American official would not say when or how U.S. forces obtained the communication, or whether it was in electronic or printed form. But the official said he had "the highest confidence of its authenticity," which he said had been verified by "multiple sources over an extended period of time."

WASHINGTON The second-ranking leader of Al Qaeda has warned the top militant in Iraq that attacks on civilians and videotaped executions committed by his followers threaten to jeopardize the broader extremist cause, a senior U.S. official says.

The warning, from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was in a 6,000-word letter, dated early in July, that was obtained by U.S. forces conducting counterterrorism operations in Iraq, the official said in a briefing.

Zawahiri said that Iraq had become "the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era" but that Zarqawi's forces should keep in mind that it was only a stepping stone toward a broader victory for militant Islam across the Middle East.

"The mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal," Zawahiri said in the letter, according to a partial translation provided by the official, who declined to provide verbatim translations of anything more than three sentences from the document. Under the ground rules for the briefing, the official cannot be identified.

The official said Zawahiri had also warned that Zarqawi's forces should concentrate their attacks on Americans rather than on Iraqi civilians, and should refrain from the kind of gruesome beheadings and other executions that have been posted on Al Qaeda Web sites.

The American official would not say when or how U.S. forces obtained the communication, or whether it was in electronic or printed form. But the official said he had "the highest confidence of its authenticity," which he said had been verified by "multiple sources over an extended period of time."

WASHINGTON The second-ranking leader of Al Qaeda has warned the top militant in Iraq that attacks on civilians and videotaped executions committed by his followers threaten to jeopardize the broader extremist cause, a senior U.S. official says.

The warning, from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was in a 6,000-word letter, dated early in July, that was obtained by U.S. forces conducting counterterrorism operations in Iraq, the official said in a briefing.

Zawahiri said that Iraq had become "the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era" but that Zarqawi's forces should keep in mind that it was only a stepping stone toward a broader victory for militant Islam across the Middle East.

"The mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal," Zawahiri said in the letter, according to a partial translation provided by the official, who declined to provide verbatim translations of anything more than three sentences from the document. Under the ground rules for the briefing, the official cannot be identified.

The official said Zawahiri had also warned that Zarqawi's forces should concentrate their attacks on Americans rather than on Iraqi civilians, and should refrain from the kind of gruesome beheadings and other executions that have been posted on Al Qaeda Web sites.

The American official would not say when or how U.S. forces obtained the communication, or whether it was in electronic or printed form. But the official said he had "the highest confidence of its authenticity," which he said had been verified by "multiple sources over an extended period of time."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/10/07/pentagon.al.qaeda/


Pentagon: Bin Laden deputy complains about money, Iraq tactics
U.S. says it obtained intercepted letter
From Jamie McIntyre
CNN


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An intercepted letter from Osama bin Laden's deputy to the al Qaeda leader in Iraq complains that the terrorist network is short of cash and faces defeat in Afghanistan, a Pentagon spokesman says.

The United States obtained a recent letter that appears to be from Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2 figure, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, outlining both the strategy and concerns of the terrorist network, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

In the letter, al-Zawahiri warns that some of the tactics currently employed by the insurgency, including the slaughtering of hostages and the suicide bombings of Muslim civilians, may risk alienating the "Muslim masses," Whitman said Thursday.

Reading from a summary of the letter, Whitman said al-Zawahiri concedes that al Qaeda has lost many key leaders, is resigned to defeat in Afghanistan, and that its lines of communication and funding sources have been seriously disrupted. Al-Zawahiri includes a plea for financial support, indicating he is strapped for money, Whitman said.

He could not say when the letter was intercepted or when authorities believe it might have been written.

The lengthy communication was said to detail the strategy of Muslim extremists to push the United States out of Iraq and establish an Islamic state that could expand its form of governance to neighboring countries, Whitman said.

Senior U.S. officials told CNN that the 6,000-word letter is believed to have been written within days of the July 7 terror attacks in London. Only parts of the letter have been made public, the officials said.

The decision to confirm the existence of the letter came after an incomplete and partially inaccurate version was leaked to news organizations, the senior officials said.

Earlier Thursday, President Bush made similar points about the terror network in what aides billed as a "major speech" on the war on terrorism, which was launched after al Qaeda's September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Bush repeated his long-standing contention that Iraq had become the central front in that conflict, and said a U.S. withdrawal from that currently unpopular conflict would leave behind a country ruled by bin Laden and al-Zarqawi.

"We will not stand by as a new set of killers dedicated to the destruction of our own country seizes control of Iraq by violence," Bush said. (Full story)

CNN's David Ensor contributed to this report.

Seized Letter Outlines Al Qaeda Goals in Iraq

By Susan B. Glasser and Walter Pincus

Al Qaeda's top deputy urged the leader of his Iraq branch in July to prepare for the inevitable U.S. withdrawal by carrying out political as well as military actions, and he lectured him that he risked being shunned by an Islamic world angered over his gruesome and not "palatable" killings of fellow Muslims, according to an intercepted letter released yesterday by the U.S. government.

The 6,000-word letter from Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman Zawahiri, to Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi amounts to a detailed portrait of al Qaeda's long-term goals in Iraq and the Middle East, and includes a striking critique of how Zarqawi has gone about waging his war against not only U.S. troops but also Iraqi civilians. The letter was posted yesterday on the Web site of Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte -- http://www.dni.gov -- after senior intelligence officials released excerpts of it last week.

Invoking the specter of the United States abruptly abandoning Iraq as it did to Vietnam, Zawahiri counseled immediate political action: "We must take the initiative and impose a fait accompli upon our enemies, instead of the enemy imposing one on us."

The missive also suggests the degree to which al Qaeda's leadership remains eager to assert its prerogatives with Zarqawi, who has become the increasingly public face of the movement when Zawahiri and bin Laden are in hiding. Although the letter does not contain a direct reference to Zarqawi until a cryptic greeting to him at the end, a senior intelligence official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity said "it's absolutely certain" it was meant for Zarqawi, declining to elaborate on how U.S. officials made that conclusion. The letter was dated July 9, but the official would not say whether it had been sent. "We obtained it in the course of counterterrorism operations in Iraq," he said.

Throughout, Zawahiri -- the Egyptian doctor who fused his own Islamic movement with bin Laden's al Qaeda in the late 1990s and is believed to operate now as the group's top commander -- comes across as a strategist trying to rein in a guerrilla operating at odds with the movement's political goals. The official said that in its repeated criticism of Zarqawi, the letter also amounts to a reproof from "an al Qaeda elder to an occasionally hotheaded field commander."

"He comes down like a ton of bricks on what has happened tactically," the official said.

"This is not a rant. It is more chilling in a sense because it's so well-argued, clean and calm," the official added. "There's a high political content. Zawahiri calls for political action equivalent to military action."

Zarqawi has been high on the list of most wanted insurgents since last year after he pledged allegiance to bin Laden, but in recent months U.S. military commanders have given even greater urgency to disrupting his network of foreign fighters and Iraqi supporters. The network is still thought to constitute only a fraction of the Iraqi insurgency in numbers, but it is credited with carrying out a disproportionately large share of the violence, as a result of suicide bombings often aimed at Shiite civilians to foment sectarian strife.

But Zawahiri urged Zarqawi in the letter to change that formula and refocus on politics. When the United States leaves, al Qaeda must be ready to claim as much territory politically in the inevitable void that will arise, he writes. Zawahiri called that stage the setting up of an "emirate," in as much of Sunni-dominated Iraq as possible, to be followed by the longer-term goal of a "caliphate," reuniting the historical Islamic empire centered in modern-day Egypt, Lebanon and Israel.

Zawahiri also questions Zarqawi's targeting of Iraqi Shiites, telling him bluntly that the "majority of Muslims don't comprehend this" and wondering whether such targeting is a "wise decision" given the need to wage war against the United States and the current Iraqi government. And even if Shiite leaders should be targeted, Zawahiri asks, "why were there attacks on ordinary Shia?"

He also told Zarqawi that fellow Muslims "will never find palatable" the televised scenes of hostage beheadings that have earned Zarqawi the sobriquet "sheik of the slaughterers." among like-minded fighters. In the media battle "for the hearts and minds" of the Islamic world, Zawahiri said, such tactics will not work.

Zawahiri has spoken before about the broad plans of the al Qaeda movement. In a book smuggled out of Afghanistan in December 2001, Zawahiri said the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks "would be nothing more than disturbing acts" if they "do not serve the ultimate goal of establishing the Muslim nation in the heart of the Islamic world." In the 2001 volume, he said the first goal should be to strike Americans and Jews "in our Muslim countries."

In the new letter, Zawahiri said the Muslim masses "do not rally except against an outside occupying enemy, especially if the enemy is firstly Jewish and secondly American."

In an unusual reverse, the letter asks Zarqawi to send money to al Qaeda, saying many of its "lines have been cut off," and that "we'll be very grateful to you" for financial help.

Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.




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http://www.dni.gov/release_letter_101105.html



Letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi
October 11, 2005
ODNI News Release No. 2-05


Today the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a letter between two senior al Qa'ida leaders, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, that was obtained during counterterrorism operations in Iraq. This lengthy document provides a comprehensive view of al Qa'ida's strategy in Iraq and globally.

The letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi is dated July 9, 2005. The contents were released only after assurances that no ongoing intelligence or military operations would be affected by making this document public.

The document has not been edited in any way and is released in its entirety in both the Arabic and English translated forms. The United States Government has the highest confidence in the letter's authenticity.

Al-Zawahiri's letter offers a strategic vision for al Qa'ida's direction for Iraq and beyond, and portrays
al Qa'ida's senior leadership's isolation and dependence.

Among the letter's highlights are discussions indicating:

The centrality of the war in Iraq for the global jihad.


From al Qa'ida's point of view, the war does not end with an American departure.


An acknowledgment of the appeal of democracy to the Iraqis.


The strategic vision of inevitable conflict, with a tacit recognition of current political dynamics in Iraq; with a call by al-Zawahiri for political action equal to military action.


The need to maintain popular support at least until jihadist rule has been established.


Admission that more than half the struggle is taking place "in the battlefield of the media."
Letter in Arabic Letter in English

Go to Link to obtain the letter





ODNI Home | Privacy and Security Notice

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051011/ap_on_..._pe/us_al_qaida

Al-Qaida No. 2: Get Set to Fill Iraq Void By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 11, 7:36 PM ET


WASHINGTON - In a letter to his top deputy in Iraq, al-Qaida's No. 2 leader said the United States "ran and left their agents" in Vietnam and the jihadists must have a plan ready to fill the void if the Americans suddenly leave Iraq.

"Things may develop faster than we imagine," Ayman al-Zawahri wrote in a letter to his top deputy in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "The aftermath of the collapse of American power in Vietnam — and how they ran and left their agents — is noteworthy. ... We must be ready starting now."

Senior U.S. military commanders have said that Iraqi security forces are improving significantly and some U.S. forces could return home early next year. Yet skeptics have raised concerns about whether such statements simply let the insurgency know how long they must wait for the U.S. to leave.

In a letter taking up 13 typed pages in its English translation, al-Zawahri also recommended a four-stage expansion of the war that would take the fighting to neighboring Muslim countries.

"It has always been my belief that the victory of Islam will never take place until a Muslim state is established ... in the heart of the Islamic world," al-Zawahri wrote.

The letter laid out his long-term plan: expel the Americans from Iraq, establish an Islamic authority and take the war to Iraq's secular neighbors, including Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

The final stage, al-Zawahri wrote, would be a clash with Israel, which he said was established to challenge "any new Islamic entity."

The letter is dated July 9, and was acquired during U.S. operations in Iraq. It was written in Arabic and translated by the U.S. government. The Pentagon briefed reporters last week on portions of the document, but the full text was not available until Tuesday.

In a statement, the National Intelligence Director's office said the letter "has not been edited in any way" and its contents were released only after it was clear no military or intelligence operations would be compromised.

House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said his committee is reviewing the letter, but he cautioned "against reading too much into a single source of intelligence."

In his letter, al-Zawahri, a Sunni, devoted significant attention to al-Zarqawi's attempts to start a civil war with the rival Muslim Shiite sect, the majority that now dominates the new Iraqi government. Ultimately, al-Zawahri concluded that violence, particularly against Shiite mosques, only raises questions among Muslims.

"This matter won't be acceptable to the Muslim populace however much you have tried to explain it, and aversion to this will continue," he wrote.

Al-Zawahri was also critical of the Taliban, which was toppled in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, because, he said, they did not have the representation of the Afghan people. He said students of the Taliban retreated to their tribes.

"Even the devout ones took the stance of spectator," al-Zawahri wrote.

Contrasting that, he saw fearlessness in battles waged in the Iraqi cities of Fallujah, Ramadi and Al Qaim.

At times, the letter got personal. Al-Zawahri said he tasted the bitterness of America's brutality, noting that his "favorite wife's chest was crushed by a concrete ceiling" during an apparent U.S. attack. His daughter died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

To this day, he wrote, he did not know the location of their graves.

The letter then switches to the court of public opinion.

"More than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media," he wrote. "We are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of our umma," or community of Muslims, he wrote.

The line is an apparent reference to a phrase — "hearts and minds" — often used by President Bush.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-10/...ent_3610560.htm
Al Qaida letter reveals its goals in Iraq: reports

www.chinaview.cn 2005-10-12 23:57:00


WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- A letter written by a top al Qaida deputy to Iraq's insurgent leader in July outlined the group's long-term goals in Iraq and the Middle East, newspapers here reported Wednesday.

In the 6,000-word letter, dated July 9, to Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant Ayman Zawahiri urged al Qaida's Iraq branch to prepare for the inevitable US withdrawal from Iraq by carrying out political as well as military actions, the reports said.

The letter, seized by US forces during counter-terrorism operations in Iraq, was first revealed last week, but officials at that time released only three sentences of it. The full text of the letter was released on Tuesday.

In the letter, Zawahiri told Zarqawi that the US occupation of Iraq had provided Islamic militants with a historical opportunity to win popular support.

"Our planning must strive to involve the Muslim masses in the battle, and to bring the mujaheed movement to the masses and not conduct the struggle far from them," Zawahiri said.

Invoking the specter of the United States abruptly abandoning Iraq as it did to Vietnam, Zawahiri counseled immediate political action: "We must take the initiative and impose a fait accompli upon our enemies, instead of the enemy imposing one on us."

The missive also contained a striking critique of how Zarqawi has gone about waging his war against not only US troops but also Iraqi civilians.

Zawahiri urged Zarqawi to refocus on politics.

"When the Untied States left, al Qaida must be ready to claim as much territory politically in the inevitable void that would arise," he wrote.

In the letter, Zawahiri compared the fierce war of resistance that Iraqis and foreign fighters have waged in Iraq since March 2003 with the speedy fall of Afghanistan's Taliban government after the American invasion in 2001.

"We don't want to repeat the mistake of the Taliban, who restricted participation in governance to the students and the people of Kandahar alone," Zawahiri wrote.

US officials declined to reveal when the letter was intercepted,and whether it had been sent or received, according to the reports. Enditem

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=hotnews&alt=&trh=20051012&hn=25254

Al-Qaeda Threatens Sunnis for 'Yes' on Iraqi Constitution
By Anadolu News Agency (aa)
Published: Wednesday, October 12, 2005
zaman.com


The Iraqi armed group “The Geish al-Taifa al-Mansura” (army of the victorious confession) has threatened to kill prominent Sunni leaders for having called for a “yes” vote for the new Iraqi constitution.

In an Internet statement released by the group, which has connections with the terrorist organization al-Qaeda, they threatened the leaders of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the main Sunni Arab party of the country, for making the call for a “yes” vote in the referendum on the new Iraqi constitution on October 15.

“The Geish al-Taifa al-Mansura (army of the victorious confession) has decided that apostates (Iraqi Islamic Party leaders) Mohsen Abdel Hamid and Tareq al-Hashemi are the targets of the mujahedeen (fighters) no matter where they are,” said the statement.

A spokesperson for the Iraqi Islamic Party led by Abdel Hamid announced that a consensus had been reached in the negotiations on the constitution and called for a “yes” vote in the referendum.


[15:26:00]

http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-10-13-voa1.cfm


US Says Letter Reveals Al-Qaida as Perverter of Islam
By David Gollust
State Department
13 October 2005



The United States Wednesday made public a letter from a senior al-Qaida figure to the group's chief operative in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, that, among other things, questions his tactic of attacking Iraqi Shiite mosques. The State Department said the letter reveals al-Qaida as a confederacy of evil, and a perverter of Islam. .


The letter from second-ranking al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri to the Iraqi insurgency chief is said to have been acquired during U.S. operations in Iraq, and it reflects apparent apprehension among al-Qaida leaders about the public relations effect of Mr. al-Zarqawi's brutal tactics.

The document made public in English and Arabic by the office of U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte is said to have been written by Mr. al-Zawahri in July.

Among other things, it says the goal of al-Qaida goes beyond the expulsion of U.S. forces from Iraq to the establishment of radical Islamic rule across the Middle East.

But it cautions against repeating mistakes of the Taleban in Afghanistan, and questions some of the tactics of Mr. al-Zarkawi, a Jordanian-born militant and self-proclaimed al-Qaida leader in Iraq.

It says ordinary Muslims find tape footage of the al-Zarkawi group's slaughter of hostages in Iraq unpalatable, and also says they cannot accept its bomb attacks on Iraqi Shiite mosques, remarking that public aversion to the tactic will continue.


Adam Ereli
The letter further says that more than half the battle is taking place in the media, and that it is a race for the hearts and minds of the Islamic world.

At a news briefing, State Department Deputy Spokesman Adam Ereli said the letter shows the media-savvy of al-Qaida, but also clearly reveals the evil nature of the enemy being faced in Iraq:

"This isn't a question of hearts and minds, it's a question of bodies and gore, quite frankly. Meaning that this is a network and this is a confederacy of evil that will stop at nothing to advance its radical agenda. And that agenda was made very clear: it's a caliphate that will start in Iraq and move to take over Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and practice the kind of abuse and intolerance and perfidy that we saw under the Taleban in Afghanistan, which was in cahoots with these guys," Mr. Ereli says.

Mr. Ereli said the best evidence of what al-Qaida and its allies are all about is their own writing.

He said the United States released the letter so that those claiming to be speaking in the name of Islam can be seen by Muslims for what they are, in his words, perverters of that religion

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1590979,00.html


Revealed: Al-Qaida plan to seize control of Iraq

· Memo to Zarqawi calls for founding of Islamic state
· Clash with Israel seen as final stage of conflict

Brian Whitaker
Thursday October 13, 2005
The Guardian


Osama bin Laden's deputy has sent a letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant leader in Iraq, setting out a blueprint for taking control of the country when American troops leave, according to US intelligence officials.
The plans are set out in a 6,000-word letter dated July 9 this year from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born doctor who is regarded as al-Qaida's second-in-command.

The existence of the letter to Zarqawi was disclosed by the US last week but its full contents have only now been made public. The office of the director of national intelligence in Washington, which posted the letter on its website, has given no details of how it fell into American hands beyond saying it was "obtained during counterterrorism operations in Iraq".

"This lengthy document provides a comprehensive view of al-Qaida's strategy in Iraq and globally," the director's office said. "The document has not been edited in any way and is released in its entirety in both the Arabic and English translated forms. The United States government has the highest confidence in the letter's authenticity."

The letter sets out a four-step plan beginning with the expulsion of US forces from Iraq, followed by the establishment of "an Islamic authority or amirate" covering as much Iraqi territory as possible.

The third stage would "extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighbouring Iraq". Finally, would come "the clash with Israel, because Israel was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity," the letter says.

Although the tone of the letter is polite and respectful, it hints at disagreements on tactics between Zarqawi and the original al-Qaida leadership, and might be interpreted as a gentle reprimand.

The writer warns Zarqawi that he risks alienating Muslim opinion with gruesome killings of fellow-believers at a time when al-Qaida in Iraq should be seeking popular support for a new religious state.

"It is imperative that, in addition to force, there be an appeasement of Muslims and a sharing with them in governance," al-Zawahiri says.

He also argues that alongside armed struggle Zarqawi should establish a political movement capable of attracting not only Islamic fighters but tribal elders, scientists, merchants and "all the distinguished ones who are not sullied by appeasing the occupation".

"We don't want to repeat the mistake of the Taliban, who restricted participation in governance," the letter says. "They did not have any representation for the Afghan people in their ruling regime, so the result was that the Afghan people disengaged themselves from them."

Zawahiri is also highly critical of attacks on ordinary Shia Muslims in Iraq. His letter repeats the ultra-orthodox Sunni view that Shia Islam is based on "falsehood", but questions the need to pursue this conflict in Iraq.

Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, who has met bin Laden and Zawahiri, said the Arabic version of the letter is well-written and has "the same style" as Zawahiri.

"I think it is fairly authentic but I can't tell 100%," he said, adding that the ideas it contains are "typical Zawahiri".

Neil Quilliam, an analyst at security consultants Control Risks, thought the letter should be treated with caution. "It's a very interesting time for it to be released," he said, referring to concerns about Sunni participation in Iraq's constitutional referendum on Saturday. The letter seemed to be urging Sunni militants to engage politically with other elements in Iraq.

"At a time when people are trying to get the Sunnis to buy into the political process, the letter suggests a coincidence of interest between Zawahiri and the ongoing political process."

In continuing violence yesterday, a suicide bomber killed 30 Iraqis at an army recruiting centre in Tal Afar, the Iraqi army said. Three Iraqis were killed and 28 wounded in Baghdad and the north-western city of Baquba in suicide car bombs, two roadside blasts and two drive-by shootings, police said.

Saad Naif al-Hardan, Iraq's minister of provincial affairs, escaped an apparent assassination attempt when a convoy of cars preparing to pick him up at his office was hit by a suicide car bomb. Police said five bodyguards and five bystanders were injured.

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=79895

Zawahiri ticks off Zarqawi for Shi’ite killings

DOUGLAS JEHL


Posted online: Thursday, October 13, 2005 at 0051 hours IST

WASHINGTON, OCTOBER 12: A senior American intelligence official said on Tuesday that a document obtained this summer by American forces in Iraq had provided the United States with “a comprehensive view of Al Qaeda strategy in Iraq and beyond” and a revealing glimpse into “the intentions of the enemy”.

A complete version of the 6,000-word document, a letter in Arabic from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 leader in Al Qaeda, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the group’s top agent in Iraq, was made available on Tuesday for the first time after its existence was disclosed to the media last week.



In it, Zawahiri told Zarqawi that the American occupation of Iraq had provided Islamic militants with a historic opportunity to win popular support. “Our planning must strive to ... bring the mujahed movement to the masses and not conduct the struggle far from them,” Zawahiri said in the letter, dated July 9.

The letter alluded to difficulties facing Al Qaeda’s leaders, including what Zawahiri calls “the real danger” posed by the Pakistani military in its searches for militants near the Afghan border.

But the official said the letter also appeared to reflect an attempt by Zawahiri “to keep Zarqawi onside”, most notably by warning him against staging additional attacks on Iraqi Shi’ites. Such strikes, warned Zawahiri, amounted to “action that the masses do not understand or approve”.

Zawahiri also compared the fierce war of resistance that Iraqis and foreign fighters have waged in Iraq since March 2003 with the speedy fall of Afghanistan's Taliban government after the American-led invasion there in 2001.

“We don't want to repeat the mistake of the Taliban, who restricted participation in governance to students and the people of Kandahar alone,” Zawahiri wrote.

“The result was that the Afghan people disengaged themselves from them. Even devout ones took the stance of the spectator and, when the invasion came, the emirate collapsed in days, because the people were either passive or hostile.” —NYT

Purported Letter to al-Zarqawi from al-Zawahri :

[ ICH - ED Note - Is this U.S. disinformation or an authintic piece of inteligence? You decide ]
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10600.htm

How the Zarqawi myth was made in America:

US and Britain used stories of Al Qaida operatives to justify the war on Iraq. Loretta Napoleoni exposes the truth
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=7574

Why Osama Roams Free:

Musharraf’s game is understandable. He is milking the US by posturing as an ally against terrorism. But he refrains from confronting domestic hardliners in order to survive. But why does America play along?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10598.htm

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/26460/

Al Qaeda's Golden Opportunity

By Fawaz A. Gerges, AlterNet. Posted October 11, 2005.


The continued occupation of Iraq has been a godsend for the otherwise troubled terrorist network. The American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq has provided Al Qaeda with a new lease on life, a second generation of recruits and fighters, and a powerful outlet to expand its ideological outreach activities to Muslims worldwide. Statements by Al Qaeda top chiefs, including bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi and Seif al-Adl, portray the unfolding confrontation in Iraq as a "golden and unique opportunity" for the global jihad movement to engage and defeat the United States and spread the conflict into neighboring Arab states in Syria, Lebanon and the Palestine-Israeli theater.

The global war is not going well for bin Laden, and Iraq enabled him to convince his jihadist followers that Al Qaeda is still alive and kicking despite suffering crippling operational setbacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and elsewhere.

Several points should be highlighted. First, it is difficult to accurately assess the precise military strength and weight of Al Qaeda in Iraq in relation to various components of the Iraqi insurgency. The Iraqi resistance is highly complex, diverse and decentralized, with a broad spectrum of ideological orientations and perspectives. Although a consesus exists that the overwhelming number of fighters are home-grown Iraqis (more than 90 percent) inspired by nationalist and religious sentiments, foreign fighters reportedly play a bigger role than their miniscule size because of their spectacular suicide bombings against Iraqi security forces, Shiites and Sunni Kurds.

A related point is that while American and Iraqi authorities estimate the number of Arab fighters under Zarqawi around a 1,000, his biographer, who has access to Zarqawi's inner circle, claims that the latter has built a force of at least 5,000 full-time fighters bolstered by a vigorous network of 20,000 homegrown supporters.

The numbers vary wildly and cannot be authenticated accurately but one point must be reiterated: the number of foreign militants represents a small percentage -- perhaps one in 10 -- of the total indigenous Iraqi fighters. Nonetheless, Al Qaeda in Iraq has proved to be deadly effective and has become a power to be reckoned with.

A related point is that the expansion of the American "war on terror," particularly the invasion and occupation of Iraq, radicalized a large segment of Iraqi society and Arab public opinion and played directly into the hands of Al Qaeda and other militants. "Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment," U.S. Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2005.

Far from hammering a deadly nail in the coffin of terror, as Bush had stated, Iraq appears to have become a recruiting tool, if not yet a recruiting ground, for militant jihadist causes and anti-American voices. A consensus exists among American, European, and Arab analysts (and the American intelligence community) that Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next or second generation of "professionalized" jihadis and that it provides them with the opportunity to enhance their technical skills.

A new classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says that Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for militants than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat. A small group of Arab fighters trained in Iraq has already made its violent debut in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Iraq is slowly and gradually replacing other theaters as a forward base for the new jihad. Today, a large concentration of active jihadis exists in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen or Saudi Arabia. According to a 2005 report by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank: "The al-Qa'ida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq." This report took a year to produce and includes the analysis of 1000 U.S. and foreign specialists, and represents the conclusion of American intelligence, which cannot be dismissed as politically and ideologically biased and antiwar.

The crisis, including increasing civilian casualties, the horror of the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners, and the cultural clash between occupier and occupied, is a welcome development for bin Laden and his associates, who have exploited it to justify their global jihad against America and its allies. The American war in Iraq was a god-sent opportunity for bin Laden and Zawahiri.

America's imperial endeavor has given them a new opening to make inroads, if not into mainstream Arab hearts and minds, into a large pool of outraged Muslims from the Middle East and elsewhere, including uprooted, young, European-born Muslims, who want to resist what they perceive as the U.S.-British onslaught on their coreligionists.

It is no wonder that Zarqawi has become such a viable asset to bin Laden and Zawahiri, who had previously kept their distance from him. A testament to Zarqawi's importance is that American military and intelligence commanders now view him as being more operationally dangerous than bin Laden himself. Some European defense analysts claim further that Zarqawi, through senior associates in Syria, Italy, and Spain, has taken over most of Al Qaeda's remaining European network; they imply that he is Al Qaeda's de facto.

A high-level internal review within the U.S. government has been launched to reassess the nature and character of the threat facing the United States in light of recent developments, particularly in Iraq. Top government officials are increasingly turning their attention to Zarqawi's Iraq and away from bin Laden's Al Qaeda to anticipate what one called "the bleed out" of hundreds or thousands of Iraq-trained jihadis back to their home countries throughout the Middle East and Western Europe: "It's a new piece of a new equation," a former senior Bush administration officials said.

Although it is difficult to assess his real military strength, Zarqawi is not a figment of the American imagination; his terrorist operations have killed thousands of innocent Iraqis. Al Qaeda in Iraq has claimed responsibility for hundreds of attacks, and Zarqawi's lieutenants have given interviews to Arab newspapers and elucidated their broader goals, which are similar to those of its parent organization -- bin Laden's Al Qaeda.

As one of his operatives told an Arab journalist, Zarqawi aims at not just expelling the Americans from Iraq but also using the country as a way station to overthrow impious Arab regimes and reestablish the caliphate: "We are fighting in Iraq but our sights are on other places, like Jerusalem."

Although we know that Zarqawi exists, we know little else about the structure of his organization and its operational capabilities. But we clearly know that homegrown Iraqis represent the overwhelming number of fighters and have led the resistance. The unfolding Iraqi struggle is political because many Iraqis are deeply divided over the future direction of their country and the American military presence. In the end, the future of Zarqawi and his associates will ultimately depend on the Iraqis' willingness and ability to compromise and establish an inclusive, independent government that is capable of securing the peace, which at the moment does not seem promising.

Finally, it is misleading to say that only militants of the Al Qaeda variety have joined the fight against the American order in Baghdad. More alarming is that throughout Arab lands the U.S. invasion of Iraq has turned into a recruiting device against perceived American imperial policies; it has radicalized both mainstream and militant Arab and Muslim public opinion.

Many young Arabs whom I met in cities and villages across the region say they would welcome an opportunity to go to Iraq and resist the Americans. Far from being Al Qaeda-type fanatics, these young men had not been politicized before the American-led invasion and had not joined any Islamist, let alone paramilitary, organization. They viewed the American war and military presence in Iraq as an alien encroachment on the ummah, which, in the eyes of their religious leaders, is not justified.

Based on my field research, I would argue that if it was not for logistical and technical reasons and difficulties, the flow of potential Muslim volunteers from the Middle East and Europe into Iraq would exceed that into Afghanistan under the Russian occupation in the 1980s. Many young men cannot afford to purchase a bus or a taxi or airplane fare to take them to the Syrian border, the most accessible and preferred route into Iraq. Arab local security services keep a close watch on the movements of young men to Iraq's neighboring countries. Other recruits are traveling through Turkey into Iran and crossing into Iraq -- often through unpoliced areas along Iraq's vast border.

Although the majority of foreign fighters come from countries in the Persian Gulf, mainly Saudi Arabia and Yemen, many others are from North African countries, including Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, and Jordan. Moreover, scores of young Muslims from European countries, mainly France and Britain, have already fought in Iraq, with a larger pool of potential recruits searching for ways to get there. There exists a broad representative sample of recruits from many countries, including both militant Islamists and zealous young men.

The problem, however, is that the latter will most likely be ideologically transformed by their experience in Iraq, as their counterparts were in Afghanistan. The baptism of blood and fire, coupled with socialization with hard-core jihadis, will make them vulnerable to militancy. According to emerging evidence, fighters returning from Iraq have already been implicated in violent actions in their native countries.

Will the tragic phenomenon of the Afghan Arabs be replaced by that of the "Iraqi Arabs"? This possibility cannot be disregarded because although the number of Arab fighters is reported to be in the low thousands, it could quadruple if Iraq descends into full sectarian strife or if neighboring countries open a wider crack in their vast porous border with Iraq. A recent assessment by the CIA concluded that since the American invasion, Iraq had in many ways assumed the role played by Afghanistan during the rise of Al Qaeda during the 1980s and 1990s for militants from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries.

Final thoughts

Instead of acknowledging structural flaws in their decision to invade Iraq and drawing appropriate lessons, President Bush and his senior aides never tire of reminding the American people that Iraq is now "the central front in the war on terror." They also indirectly insinuate that they created more enemies with serious risk to U.S. security. Bush's current and previous chiefs of intelligence, Porter J. Gross and George Tenet, respectively, have told Congress that radical anti-Americanism and the deadly expertise used by Al Qaeda have spread to other Sunni Muslim extremists, who are behind a "next wave" of terrorism that will endure "for the foreseeable future with or without Al Qaeda in the picture."

Despite all this overwhelming official evidence, there is little recognition, let alone acknowledgment, among Bush administration officials that the expansion of the war against Al Qaeda has damaged America's image, reputation and standing in the Muslim world as well as threatened international peace. This is well documented with hundreds of surveys, polls, and reports, and it has given militancy a new lease on life.

One of the major findings in my book, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global, is that contrary to the received wisdom, the dominant response to Al Qaeda in the Muslim world was very hostile, and few activists, let alone ordinary Muslims, embraced its global jihad. Al Qaeda faced a two-front war, internally and externally, with the interior front threatening its very existence.

On the internal and external fronts, Muslims have played a fundamental role in isolating Al Qaeda and have contributed significantly to the multiple wars being waged against the militant network. Of all these struggles, bin Laden and his transnationalist cohorts have lost the war of ideas -- the struggle for Muslim minds. That was a critical achievement overlooked by American commentators and policymakers, who tuned their attention to Al Qaeda and like-minded militants and overlooked the fault lines among jihadis and the vast societal opposition to global jihad.

Had they tuned in closely to the internal struggles roiling Muslim lands, they would have had second thoughts about the military expansion of the so-called "war on terror" and would have realized that Al Qaeda is a tiny fringe organization with no viable entrenched constituency. Had they listened carefully to the multiple critiques of Al Qaeda by Muslim scholars and opinion makers, they would have had answers to their often-asked question: where are the Muslim moderates?

Had they observed the words and deeds of former jihadis and Islamists, they would have known that the jihadist movement has been torn apart and that Al Qaeda does not speak for or represent religious nationalists -- or Muslim public opinion; American commentators and policymakers would also have realized that the internal defeat of Al Qaeda on its home front -- the Muslim world -- was and is the most effective way to hammer a deadly nail into its coffin.

The United States and the international community could have found intelligent means to nourish and support the internal forces that were opposed to militant ideologies like the bin Laden network. The way to go was not to declare a worldwide war against a nonconventional paramilitary foe with a tiny or no social base of support and try to settle scores with old regional dictators. That is exactly what bin Laden and his senior associates had hoped the United States would do -- lash out militarily against the ummah.

As Seif al-Adal, Al Qaeda's overall military commander recently put it, "The Americans took the bait and fell into our trap."


Fawaz A. Gerges is the author of "The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global." He holds the Christian A. Johnson Chair in International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence College.

October 13, 2005
ABC News

Iraq's al Qaeda denounces Zawahri letter as fake-Web
Ayman al-Zawahri , Al Qaeda's second in command, speaks in a video aired by Al Jazeera on August 4 2005. Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq on Thursday rejected as a fake a letter by top group leader Zawahri which was issued by U.S. officials this week, according to an Internet posting. REUTERS/Al Jazeera
Reuters

Oct 13, 2005 — DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq on Thursday rejected as a fake a letter by top group leader Ayman al-Zawahri which was issued by U.S. officials this week, according to an Internet posting.

"We in Al Qaeda Organization announce that there is no truth to these claims, which are only based on the imagination of the politicians of the Black (White) House and their slaves," the group said in a statement posted on an Islamist Web site about the letter.

According to the letter released this week by U.S. intelligence officials, al Qaeda's second in command Zawahri urged the group's leader in Iraq to prepare for an Islamic government to take over the country when U.S. forces leave. He also said brutal tactics risked alienating Muslims.

Copyright 2005 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Last Updated: Thursday, 13 October 2005, 17:31 GMT 18:31 UK

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Al-Qaeda disowns 'fake letter'

The US has put a $25m bounty on Zawahiri's head
A statement claiming to be by al-Qaeda in Iraq has rejected as a fake a letter allegedly written by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command.
US intelligence published the letter in full, saying it was intended for the alleged head of the movement in Iraq.

In it, Ayman Zawahiri appears to question insurgents' tactics in attacking Shia Muslims in Iraq.

The claims by US intelligence are "based on imagination", a statement posted on an Islamist website.

"We in al-Qaeda organisation announce that there is no truth to these claims, which are only based on the imagination of the politicians of the Black [White] House and their slaves," the statement said.

It is not possible to verify either the letter or the subsequent denial.

News of the 6,000-word document first emerged last week. US officials insisted they believed it was genuine and recent.

Cryptic reference

According to US intelligence officials, the letter offers a remarkable insight into al-Qaeda thinking.

Many of your Muslim admirers amongst the common folk are wondering about your attacks on the Shia. The sharpness of this questioning increases when the attacks are on one of their mosques... My opinion is that this matter won't be acceptable to the Muslim populace however much you have tried to explain it

Letter US says is from Zawahiri to Zarqawi

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Zawahiri letter in full (58K)

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After leaking a short extract, the new director of US intelligence has now published it in full on his website in English and Arabic.

The Americans will not say exactly when or how they intercepted it, except that it was during operations in Iraq.

The letter is not directly addressed to Zarqawi - although there is a cryptic reference to him.

But US officials say it is clear he is the intended recipient. It certainly heaps praise on whoever it was meant for.

But much of its tone also appears to be cautionary, as if trying to rein in events in Iraq, and suggesting possible tensions within al-Qaeda - "don't let your eyes lose sight of the target", it says.

'Four goals'

It sets out a detailed list of four incremental goals - expel the Americans from Iraq, set up an Islamic emirate in Iraq, extend the jihad "to the secular countries neighbouring Iraq", and "the clash with Israel".

But, crucially, it says the strategy requires popular support.

And it hints that some of the more brutal tactics employed by insurgents may be counterproductive.

The letter also suggests that the withdrawal of the US from Iraq could come quickly - as happened in the Vietnam War.

BBC world affairs correspondent Nick Childs says, whether this is all genuine, whether Zarqawi ever received the letter, and what impact it might have are not clear.

What is clear is that the level of insurgent violence is putting enormous political pressure on the Iraqi government and the US-led coalition at the moment.

So the fact that this is brought to light now may not be coincidental, our correspondent says.

Finally, the letter hints at the difficulties for al-Qaeda's top leaders, saying the operations of the Pakistani army in that country's tribal areas are "the real danger".

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/101305.html

'Al-Qaeda Letter' Belies Bush's Iraq Claims
By Robert Parry
October 14, 2005


A letter that U.S. intelligence attributes to al-Qaeda’s second-in-command undercuts George W. Bush’s latest claims that the terrorist organization has plans for conquests reaching halfway around the world and targeting America’s freedom.

The 6,000-word letter purportedly written by Osama bin-Laden’s deputy Ayman Zawahiri on July 9 lists al-Qaeda’s goals as far more limited – driving U.S. forces from Iraq, establishing a state or “emirate” in the country’s Sunni enclaves, resisting outside assaults, and only later trying to expand into a religious “caliphate” incorporating surrounding territory.

The proposed “caliphate” could stretch to the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt, said the letter purportedly sent by Zawahiri to al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Jordanian-born Abu Musab Zarqawi.

By contrast, Bush said in an Oct. 6 speech that Muslim extremists intended to use Iraq as a base to “establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia,” while simultaneously engineering the strategic defeat of the United States.

The alleged al-Qaeda letter states, too, that the “idea” about the caliphate is not “infallible” and was mentioned “only to stress … that the mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal.”

Along with its fears that its jihadists might quit if U.S. troops leave Iraq, al-Qaeda – as reflected in the letter – looks like a struggling organization under financial and political duress, holding out hope for limited successes in Iraq, rather than dreaming of global domination. Al-Qaeda’s leaders are so short of funds that they asked their embattled operatives in Iraq to send $100,000 to relieve a cash squeeze, according to the letter.

The letter in Arabic and an English translation were posted at the Web site of the U.S. director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, on Oct. 11.

Bleak Picture

Five days earlier, Bush sought to rally U.S. public support for his Iraq policy by painting a terrifying picture if Iraq fell to Islamic extremists.

“With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation.”

Bush envisioned an Islamic terrorist empire reaching from the Atlantic Ocean on the west to the Pacific Ocean on the east.

But the disparity between the ambitions cited in the purported al-Qaeda letter and the claims in Bush’s speech suggests that the president may be continuing his pattern of exaggerating the threat posed by his Islamic enemies, much as he hyped allegations of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify invading Iraq in March 2003.

Just as he roused American fears with images of “mushroom clouds” from hypothetical Iraqi nuclear bombs, Bush now appears to be presenting a worst-case scenario about the threat from Islamic extremism.

In his speech, Bush likened al-Qaeda leaders to historic tyrants, such as Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, suggesting that anyone opposed to the Iraq War is inviting slaughter on a massive scale. But there are few indications that al-Qaeda’s leaders – believed to be holed up in the mountains along the Pakistani-Afghan border – represent that level of threat.

Rather than totalitarian leaders on the scale of Hitler and Stalin in charge of powerful countries, al-Qaeda comes across in the letter like a marginal movement whose dreams of just gaining a foothold in Iraq are fragile.

If U.S. intelligence is correct about the letter’s origin, al-Qaeda’s leaders appear to be the isolated ones, knowing little about world news and even lacking a reliable means for getting out their message. The letter’s author – purportedly Zawahiri – complains that six of his audio statements “were not published for one reason or another.”

The letter also lectures the foreign jihadists in Iraq about how offended many Muslims are by the beheadings of Western captives and the bombings that have killed hundreds of Shiites, the majority Islamic sect that gained political dominance after the U.S. invasion and the ouster of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

“Many of your Muslim admirers amongst the common folk are wondering about your attacks on the Shia,” the letter said. “The sharpness of this questioning increases when the attacks are on one of their mosques.”

[An Internet posting by Al Qaeda’s Iraq wing denounced the letter as a fake “based only on the imagination of the politicians of the Black (White) House and their slaves,” Reuters reported on Oct. 13.]

Menacing Threat

Though the “Zawahiri letter” – if real – depicts a nearly bankrupt movement facing political and physical isolation, Bush has given the American people another image: al-Qaeda as a menacing strategic threat bent on first regional and then global domination.

Bush’s argument goes back to his assertions after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that the motive then was hatred of American freedom and al-Qaeda’s goal was to establish a worldwide totalitarian system.

A number of Middle East experts, however, said al-Qaeda’s goals were much smaller, seeking to punish the United States for its interference in the Muslim world, its positioning of military bases in Saudi Arabia and its support for Arab governments that Islamic fundamentalists considered corrupt.

In his Oct. 6 speech, however, Bush again insisted that the struggle was really about freedom.

“Freedom is once again assaulted by enemies determined to roll back generations of democratic progress,” Bush said. “Once again, we’re responding to a global campaign of fear with a global campaign of freedom. And once again, we will see freedom’s victory.”

Bush also made the historical observation that “over the past few decades, radicals have specifically targeted Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Jordan for potential takeover.” Bush could have added Algeria, too.

But the larger point is that in all these cases the radicals were defeated. That’s why al-Qaeda leaders have been forced to flee their homelands. Bin-Laden is a Saudi; Zawahiri is an Egyptian; Zarqawi is a Jordanian. In the late 1990s, bin-Laden was even banished from the Sudan, forcing him to seek refuge in the remote Afghan mountains.

This history could support an analysis that Muslim societies can handle these extremist movements if the United States and other Western powers don’t get too directly involved. That analysis, in turn, could justify a policy shift in which U.S. and British forces withdraw from Iraq, thus removing the lure for foreign suicide-bombers and enabling Iraqis – both Sunni and Shiite – to deal with Zarqawi’s depleted forces.

The “Zawahiri letter” seems to share that view, albeit expressed in the fear that a prompt departure of U.S. troops might cause young jihadists to lay down their weapons and give up the fight.

Indeed, an argument could be made that al-Qaeda’s leadership and hard-liners in the Bush administration are serving to bolster each other. While Bush and his neoconservative advisers argue that U.S. forces can’t leave Iraq now, al-Qaeda’s leaders are worried that a sudden U.S. withdrawal might precipitate a collapse of their jihadist forces in Iraq.

The Bush administration also has failed to make clear the distinctions between the foreign jihadists, the fraction of the fighters in Iraq whose tactic of choice is the suicide bomb, and the much larger Sunni-led insurgency, which is battling over more traditional political grievances and fighting mostly with small arms and booby traps.

With U.S. forces acting as allies of the Shiites, the Sunnis are not in position to turn on the foreign jihadists who also are fighting the Americans and the Shiites. If American troops left, however, not only would many young jihadists be deprived of their chief motivation for suicide-bombing but the Sunnis would no longer find the Zarqawi remnants very useful. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Iraq & the Logic of Withdrawal.”]

Stay the Course

Back in the United States, seeking to revive public enthusiasm for the war, Bush and his neocon advisers are reprising the strategy of late 2002 and early 2003, using over-the-top threat analyses to whip the U.S. public and the news media into a war frenzy.

Before the Iraq invasion, leading U.S. publications, including the New York Times, played up dubious claims about Iraq’s alleged WMD, while Bush’s supporters lashed out at anyone who questioned Bush’s case for war. Some pro-war enthusiasts drove trucks over Dixie Chicks CDs because one of the singers had criticized the president.

In the months after the invasion, even though the WMD wasn’t found, Bush continued to have a relatively free hand in misrepresenting facts about the Iraq War. For instance, four months after the invasion, Bush began revising the history about whether Hussein let in United Nations weapons inspectors before the invasion.

Hussein had acquiesced to a resumption of the UN inspections in fall 2002, but Bush forced the inspectors out in March 2003.

By July 2003, however, Bush began claiming that he had no choice but to invade Iraq because Hussein had shown “defiance” and had not let the U.N. inspectors in. Though Bush repeated this false claim again and again, no one in the U.S. news media challenged him. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “President Bush, With the Candlestick …”]

There is also a longer history of neoconservatives getting political mileage out of overstating foreign threats. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the neocons exaggerated Soviet strategic power to justify a massive U.S. arms buildup. They did it again when leftist governments in Nicaragua and Grenada were pitched to the American people as grave dangers to the United States.

Amid the triumphalism around the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, few American analysts bothered to reexamine the issue of whether the communist bloc was in terminal decline by the mid-1970s, as some intelligence experts believed, and thus whether the U.S. arms buildup in the 1980s was a waste of money.

Instead, the neoconservatives enshrined as conventional wisdom that the arms race of the 1980s and the military assaults on leftist regimes in places like Nicaragua and Grenada brought the Soviet Union down. [For details on this history, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]

If the purported “Zawahiri letter” is real – as the U.S. intelligence community asserts – the discrepancy between that image of al-Qaeda, subsisting on the political fringes, and Bush’s portrait of an immensely powerful al-Qaeda suggests that Bush and the neocons are back at the game of scaring the American people.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=...220033018&par=0


IRAQ: WE ARE FIGHTING FOR AN ISLAMIC STATE, SAYS AL-QAEDA IN IRAQ

Baghdad, 18 Oct. (AKI) - Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the terror group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has released a new statement in which it explains the reasons for its terror campaign and states that they are not fighting the US occupation of Iraq, but to create "an Islamic state which is part of the caliphate and the Muslim territory."

The message from the terror group appeared on the Internet on Tuesday, just a few days ahead of a visit to Baghdad by the secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. "The secretary of the Arab League has been tasked with going to Iraq to convince the Sunnis to enter the political game so as to stop the Jihad [holy war] in the Sunni areas. With the excuse of national interest, they are trying to save the Americans," the statement says.

The terror group then goes on to reveal its real objectives, saying: "We are not fighting to chase out the occupier or to save national unity and keep the borders outlined by the infidels intact," the statement continues. "We are fighting because it is a religious duty to do it, just as it is a duty to take the Sharia [Islamic law] to the government and create an Islamic state."

In the last few weeks the Islamic forums on the Internet have regularly broadcast images relating to the possible creation of al-Qaeda's hypothetical Islamic state, which could take shape within Iraq's rebel al-Anbar province.

Fake letter, real trouble?


The alleged Al Qaeda correspondence is likely a forgery that, if exposed, could embarrass the Bush administration.

By Bruce B. Lawrence
BRUCE B. LAWRENCE is a professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University and editor of "Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden," to be published by Verso Books next month.

October 18 2005

THE LETTER from Ayman Zawahiri to Abu Musab Zarqawi that surfaced last week was immediately pressed into service as part of the U.S. war on terror.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...omment-opinions

imesherald.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15445995&BRD=1672&PAG=461&dept_id=33380&rfi=6


Able Danger warned of attack on USS Cole
By: KEITH PHUCAS, Times Herald Staff
10/25/2005

NORRISTOWN - Senior Pentagon officials were warned not to let the USS Cole dock in Yemen two days before terrorists attacked the ship five years ago killing 17 sailors, according to Congressman Curt Weldon, who said the crucial intelligence was gleaned from the former secret defense operation, "Able Danger."



Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, revealed the information in a House speech last Wednesday evening that blasted the Defense Intelligence Agency's (DIA) attempts to discredit Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a DIA employee who worked as a liaison with the "Able Danger" team.
In June, Shaffer told The Times Herald during an interview on Capitol Hill that the now-defunct data mining operation had linked Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta to an al-Qaida cell in Brooklyn in 2000 - more than a year before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The military's Special Operations Command ran the high-tech dragnet that searched for terrorist linkages. The terrorist associations were mapped out on large charts, according to Shaffer and other of "Able Danger" colleagues, during the program that operated between 1999 and 2001.
However, following Shaffer's attempts to broker an arrangement that would draw the FBI into the operation, the program was shut down.
Weldon and Shaffer believe "Able Danger" intelligence may have disrupted - or even prevented - the Sept. 11 attacks if it had continued.
In August, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott and James D. Smith, a defense contractor, corroborated Shaffer's story.
On Wednesday, Weldon again criticized the Pentagon for dragging its feet in its probe of the defense program's history, and continued his criticism of the CIA, which he said tried to protect its own intelligence turf from other government intelligence agencies.
"What we have here, I am convinced of this now, is an aggressive attempt by CIA management to cover up their own shortcomings in not being able to do what the Able Danger team did," he said.
Besides claiming to identifying Atta from a grainy photograph prior to Sept. 11, the intelligence team also tried to warn the Pentagon not to allow the USS Cole to make a refueling stop in Yemen five years ago, Weldon said.
On Oct. 12, 2000, a small boat loaded with explosives rammed into the side of the USS Cole as the ship refueled in port at Aden, killing the 17 Navy personnel.
"(Able Danger members) also identified the threat to the USS Cole two weeks before the attack, and two days before the attack were screaming not to let the (ship) come into the harbor at Yemen, because they knew something was going to happen," he said.
The "Able Danger" group operated at the Army's former Land Information Warfare Center (LIWA), in Ft. Belvoir, Va. After LIWA's intelligence gathering capability impressed Weldon, he tried to pitch the idea of a collaborative intelligence center to the CIA in 1999, but was rebuffed.
Also in his speech, Weldon accused the DIA of trying to smear Shaffer rather than come clean on why "Able Danger" was shut down.
Shaffer, who was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in Afghanistan, had his top-secret security clearance suspended in 2004 allegedly because of disputes over travel expenses and phone bills.
But his supporters suggest Shaffer is being made a scapegoat for going public with the "Able Danger" revelations in August.
Two days before he was set to testify about the program before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 21, the Reserve officer's secret clearance was revoked, and the Defense Department barred him, Phillpott and Smith from testifying at the hearing.
Also in August, Pentagon officials told reporters at a press conference that "Able Danger" data had been deleted from computers. A former Army intelligence officer, Erik Kleinsmith, confirmed this at the Judiciary Committee hearing, testifying he was ordered to destroy information.
During the life of the program, the operation's team members created charts linking terrorists. However, during the recent investigation, none have been found.
The Pentagon, which claimed it is restricted from retaining intelligence on United States citizens and foreign residents living in the U.S., so-called "U.S. persons," for more than 90 days.
However, Weldon has previously said most of the program's data was open source information and not classified. According to guidelines in Army Regulation 381-10, intelligence data can be kept indefinitely if it was culled from open sources.
An unnamed "Able Danger official," Weldon said, was told by a Pentagon lawyer that it's okay to extend the time intelligence information is stored.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Chris Conway, said recently that Defense Department officials worried that any public testimony given about "Able Danger" risked revealing classified information.
"Prior to any testimony, we expressed our security concerns with Congress," Conway said. "We said in discussing Able Danger, (it) could inadvertently reveal classified information."
Defense officials said they would allow military personnel to testify about the program behind closed doors.
Previously, Shaffer said that Atta, an Egyptian, had been linked to the El Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y., a hotbed of anti-American sentiment once frequented by Sheik Omar Ahmed Abdul Rahman, know as the "Blind Sheik." Rahman is also Egyptian. Atta was not believed to be in the U.S., however, when he came to the attention of the team.
In 1995, Rahman was convicted of plotting to bomb various sites in New York City. Four of Rahman's associates were convicted in 2002 of conspiring with him to commit terrorist acts while he was in prison.
Though Shaffer was not allowed to give testimony at the Sept. 21 committee hearing, his attorney, Mark Zaid, did testify.
As a sobering reminder of "Able Danger's" unfulfilled promise, Zaid said the missing charts showing terrorist links likely still contained "several dozen" individuals yet to be captured.
"There are terrorist on the chart who may still be out there and planning attacks," Zaid said.
Keith Phucas can be reached at kphucas@timesherald.com or 610-272-2500, ext. 211.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-11-01-voa6.cfm


Al-Qaida in Iraq Says Moroccan Hostages to Face Trial
By VOA News
01 November 2005




Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (file photo)
Al-Qaida in Iraq says it will put on trial two employees of the Moroccan embassy in Baghdad that it kidnapped last month.

In an unverifiable Internet posting, the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said Tuesday an Islamic court would determine the men's fate.

The Moroccan government has confirmed that two of its employees disappeared October 20 while driving from Jordan to Baghdad.


U.S. soldier watches as detainees are released from Abu Ghraib prison (Oct. 1 2005 file photo)
Meanwhile, the U.S. military says it released 500 detainees from Abu Ghraib prison Tuesday, ahead of this week's Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. None of those released was guilty of violent crimes.

And the U.S. military reported the death of another service member. The soldier, killed Monday, was the 93rd American killed in Iraq last month, making it the second deadliest month this year for American forces in Iraq.

Some information for this report provided by AP and Reuters.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GK04Ak01.html
Al-Qaeda goes back to base
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - Al-Qaeda is in the process of a decisive ideological debate that could see the highly secretive group restructured within a year, with bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, and adopting a more open, centralized, approach.

Two issues lie at the heart of the matter. The first is whether al-Qaeda achieves its aims by "fighting against evil", or whether it "fights against evil and its allies", according to contacts familiar with the group who spoke to Asia Times Online.

The second issue involves al-Qaeda's lack of a physical base, a matter of concern to Islamic scholars, following its retreat from



Afghanistan and subsequently being forced out of hideouts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Regarding the discourse on al-Qaeda's enemy, on one side a major portion of al-Qaeda wants to remain true to the original goal of ousting foreign forces from the Persian Gulf region and ending the occupation of Muslim territories; on the other, a powerful group led by Egyptian Abu Amro Abdul Hakeem, also known as Sheikh Essa, who has strongly influenced elements in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, believes that the targets should be extended.

In al-Qaeda jargon, there are dajal (anti-God) forces, and there are pro-God forces. The US and its European allies are dajal forces, and remain the primary target of the majority in al-Qaeda.

Sheikh Essa argues that the Muslim leaderships in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt and, not least, Pakistan should not be considered pro-God forces, as they are now.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are central in this debate. Sheikh Essa fervently believes that the Pakistani military is as bad as that of the US, and thus should be categorized as an anti-God force whose leader, President General Pervez Musharraf, sides with the US with full conviction.

The October 8 earthquake in South Asia, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives, most of them in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, has added incendiary clout to Sheikh Essa, whose followers now claim that the disaster was God's revenge against Pakistan, especially as it took place exactly on the fourth anniversary of the launch of US air sorties from Pakistani bases to strike against Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda had a strong presence.

The Sheikh Essa faction has other reasons to hate the Pakistani establishment as it is seen as having betrayed the al-Qaeda cause by handing over hundreds of al-Qaeda members, and even their children and wives, to US authorities; this following Pakistan's reversal of its support for the Taliban and the Pakistani army being sent into the tribal areas to root out foreign fighters and members of the Afghan resistance.

Osama bin Laden has always resisted taking the fight to Muslim countries. According to scholars such as Saad al-Faqih, who is considered very close to al-Qaeda, bin Laden understands that a major blow against Saudi Arabia would bring down the regime, but the ensuing chaos and mayhem would be reason for the US to justify sending its troops into the holy land.

The senior al-Qaeda leadership believes that only Musharraf is "pro-God" , and not the Pakistani Army; therefore for the time being they want to leave Pakistan alone and keep their focus on the US.

Asia Times Online contacts close to al-Qaeda say that recently the top leadership has become alarmed at the widening split within the organization and has begun consultations with all major Islamic jihadi groups and scholars.

Pending the results of these deliberations, expected by the end of this northern winter, a definitive and final word on the real course of the struggle will be reached, after which major decisions are expected on the shape and nature of al-Qaeda.

Back to base
Many among Islamic groups, scholars and educated masses in the Islamic world are sympathetic with al-Qaeda's struggle against US imperialism, but they have serious reservations over its shadowy nature and its methods of operation, many of which, they believe, go against the tenets of Islam.

From the days of the Prophet Mohammed it has been established that neither the message of Islam nor its struggle is a secret. Therefore, Muslim scholars are agreed that an Islamic state is a prerequisite before - and from which - jihad can be waged.

This places al-Qaeda in something of a spot, as nowadays it has no "home base" from which to wage jihad. In discussions in the past several months with prominent scholars and a top leader of an Islamic group (followed by Asia Times Online contacts), al-Qaeda leaders argued that they were fighting a defensive jihad as Afghanistan had been attacked and occupied, followed by Iraq. Since they don't have a piece of land in their possession, al-Qaeda has had to conduct irregular and guerrilla warfare.

However, the contacts maintain that the al-Qaeda leadership is optimistic that by the start of summer next year they will be in control of significant "space" in Iraq and in Afghanistan, which would legitimize their jihad in the eyes of scholars.

This would include appointing an ameer (commander) whose name would be announced, and al-Qaeda's irregular fighting would be organized under one command. The existing setup of small, virtually independent cells would be subsumed under the single command, and no one would operate on their own, as has been the trend since al-Qaeda lost their base in Afghanistan following the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001, and the intense pressure of the US-led "war on terror", which saw many communication and financial links severed.

The cells would fall under single commands in Iraq and Afghanistan, from where they would be directed for external operations, such as launching attacks on the US.

If al-Qaeda prevails over its internal conflicts and adopts the strategy as outlined above, it would be a major turning point not only for the organization, but for the whole of the Muslim world and beyond.

Dawa (Islamic message), hijra (evolution from an enemy state into an Islamic state) and jihad are the three stages based on the life of the Prophet Mohammed to bring about revolution in society.

In essence, al-Qaeda, which means means "the base" in Arabic, is in search of a physical base, like the mujahideen had during the Soviet resistance period in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when they grabbed all rural Afghanistan, or like the one al-Qaeda had two years ago when it moved into the Shawal and Shakai areas near South and North Waziristan on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, before being driven out by combined US and Pakistan efforts.

Once new bases are found - al-Qaeda confidently believes this will be done in Iraq and Afghanistan - the process of dawa, hijra and jihad will begin, and many presently peripheral Islamic groups across the world will pour into these two countries for a reinvigorated campaign against US forces.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9909169/

Key al-Qaida figure reportedly captured

Suspect is a leader of European terror network, officials tell NBC News
Mustafa Setmariam Nasar is shown in an undated file photo distributed by the

Updated: 11:03 a.m. ET Nov. 3, 2005
WASHINGTON - A key figure in al-Qaida’s terror network in Europe is under arrest, U.S. counterterrorism officials tell NBC News.

Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say that the alleged terrorist, Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, was recently arrested in Pakistan. Pakistani government officials say they are not aware of any such arrest.

Nasar is an expert in explosives and chemicals who trained recruits at al-Qaida terror camps in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, according to counterterror officials and Nasar's wanted poster on the State Department's Rewards for Justice Web site.

Nasar was born in Syria but is married to a Spanish woman and has Spanish nationality. He has traveled extensively in Europe and has militant connections in Europe, Pakistan and elsewhere, and security experts believe his arrest could prove to be an intelligence bonanza for the CIA and other U.S. and European counterterrorism agencies.

Nasar is known inside the US intelligence world as the “pen jihadist”, a prolific writer whose communiques carry great weight in the militant underworld. He has written extensively on the Internet of his desire to use chemical or biological weapons against the United States, an effort he has described as “dirty bombs for a dirty nation."

$5 million reward
Last year, the U.S. government announced a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of Nasar.

In September 2003, Nasar was among 35 people named in an indictment handed down by a Spanish magistrate for terrorist activities connected to al-Qaida.

Nasar's name has been linked in the press to the July 7 terror bombings in London and to the deadly Madrid bombings in 2004, but US intelligence officials say they are not clear what role, if any, Nasar played in those attacks.

The Associated Press reported Thursday morning that a man believed to be Nasar was captured in a raid this week in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province. A second suspect, identified as Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistani Islamic militant group allegedly linked to al-Qaida, also was arrested and a third suspect, a Saudi named Shaikh Ali Mohammed al-Salim, were shot and killed during the raid, AP reported.

Report on arrest said inaccurate
But U.S. counterterrorism officials tell NBC News that Nasar was arrested prior to the Quetta raid, and say it is unclear if the Quetta arrests are even connected at all to Nasar's arrest.

Nasar's wanted poster on the Rewards for Justice Web site reports:

"Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, also known as Abu Musab al-Suri, is an al-Qaida member and former trainer at the Derunta and al-Ghuraba terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Born in Aleppo, Syria in 1958, Nasar was a member of the radical Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. He fled Syria in the 1980s and traveled widely throughout the Middle East and North Africa, before associating with the Algerian Islamic Group. He settled in Madrid in 1987 and gained Spanish citizenship through marriage.

While in Spain, he authored a series of inflammatory essays under the pen name Umar Abd al-Hakim. In 1995 he moved to United Kingdom and served as a European intermediary for al-Qaida. Nasar traveled extensively between Europe and Afghanistan throughout the late 1990s, finally moving his family to Afghanistan in 1998. He attempted to organize his own extremist group prior to September 11, 2001 — but in the wake of the attacks he pledged loyalty to Osama bin Ladin as a member of al-Qaida. While in Afghanistan, Nasar worked closely with Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, to train extremists in poisons and chemicals. Nasar also conducted training at the al-Ghuraba camp in Afghanistan. He is likely in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Recent unconfirmed press reports suggest that he may have had a role in the March 11, 2004, Madrid bombings."

More than 700 arrested
Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in its war on terrorism, says it has arrested more than 700 al-Qaida suspects since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in America, and has handed most of the suspects to the United States.

The last reported arrest of a suspected key al-Qaida figure in Pakistan was in May, when Abu Farraj al-Libbi, the alleged mastermind of assassination attempts against Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was nabbed after a shootout in a northwestern town. He was later handed over to the United States.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

"Al-Qaida" to execute two Moroccan hostages:

The al-Qaida in Iraq militant group said Thursday that it has sentenced to death two Moroccan embassy employees kidnapped last month in Iraq, the insurgents' latest attempt to scare Arab nations from sending diplomats.
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgere...ld/13070185.htm

Al Qaeda`s Afghanistan Jailbreak

From DEBKA-Net-Weekly Oct. 21

November 2, 2005, 2:34 PM (GMT+02:00)


Four al Qaeda prisoners who got away


To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE .

To this day no one can explain how four senior al Qaeda operatives were able to break out of the top-security American jail in the Afghan Bagram air base near Kabul on July 10; how they breached its defenses, cut across the giant base peopled by 12,000 US troops, slipped through checkpoints and security screenings and exited the base undetected.

There can be no doubt that the fugitives received outside help – whether in the form of inside intelligence or Afghans employed on the base.

This week, on Tuesday, October 18, the four escapees surfaced in a videotape aired by the Dubai-based Arab language satellite TV channel Al Arabiya. Its editing was of superior quality compared with the tapes that usually coming out of Afghanistan.

In one section, Mahmoud al-Kahtani, a Saudi, instructs a group of fighters and shows them a map of the jail from which the four escaped. He explained that Sunday was chosen for the jailbreak because then non-believers have the day off.

Abdullah Hashimi, a Syrian, next explained how the four fugitives hid for four days inside the American air base surrounding the prison without being discovered. They then fled and joined the Taliban outside.

The third fugitive, Mahmoud Ahmad, an Iraqi known also as Faruq al-Iraqi, is the narrator. He was arrested in 2002 in Indonesia as the suspected link between al Qaeda and the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiya. The fourth fugitive, Muhammad Hassan, identified as a Libyan, says the least of the four but also appeared to be the group’s leader.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terror sources identify Hassan as Sheikh Hassan Qaid, a Libyan.

Before the videotape was released, he circulated a special message to all al Qaeda fighters which outlined in detail his impressions of American methods of pursuit, detention, interrogation and handling of prisoners in the US jail facilities where he was held.

According to Hassan Qaid, the Americans when they caught him subjected him to a full body search; they took not only his finger- and toe-prints, but photographed the retinas of his eyes and took hair samples from all parts of his body.

He listed the eight questions which he claimed American interrogators fired at him:

1. What terrorist attacks are planned for inside the United States?

2. What terrorist attacks are planned against American targets overseas?

3. Where are Osama bin Laden and his close aides?

4. Who are the next-generation al Qaeda commanders and where are they to be found?

5. Where are the Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his following hiding?

6. Where are Mullah Omar’s spiritual mentor, Sheikh Jalal al Edin Haqani, and his son Saraj al Edin Hagani, the Taliban’s operations chief?

7. Where does al Qaeda get its financing and who are its sources?

8. Where do al Qaeda fighters hold their weapons training exercises?

Without naming his sources, Qaid offered detailed information on additional American and Afghan detention camps in Afghanistan - with their codenames. Facilities on the lines of the Bagram prison, where he and his comrades were held, are located at the Kandahar military air base in the south. Only al Qaeda members rated by the Americans as senior are kept there, he said; the others are sent to camps managed by Afghans in the interior. Some are also shipped to prisons in Jordan, Egypt, the UAE and Morocco. Of late, the Americans had begun transferring prisoners to Indonesia.

The escaped al Qaeda captive claimed that the most important American prison in the country, where he and his comrades were held, is located at the end of the Bagram airfield’s runway. It is there that the Americans hold Arab al Qaeda prisoners. They call it the Dark Camp. Despite repeated promises to the Red Cross to shut the camp down, it remains operational.

Another American prison in Kabul is located, says the escaped al Qaeda fugitive, in the former palace of the ousted Taliban regime’s leader Mullah Omar. There is one more American jail called Presidency 2 in Kabul and another in the northern Valley of Panjshir.

Qaid’s letter to this friends ends by saying that he has collected many important pieces of information about the Americans, but he will share them only with people he trusts whom he will brief by a different form of communication.

“The knife that slaughtered the guards at Bagram and set us free is now on its way to other places,” said Hassan Qaid. This is taken to mean that further jailbreaks are in the works in Afghanistan on the lines of the escape of the four al Qaeda operatives from Bagram.

Incidentally, US officials in Kabul have never confirmed the escape of this foursome or verified the claim that prison warders were murdered.

Not for the first time, I am wondering whose side the authorities are on. Whilst probably innocent men are getting tortured, it seems that the worst ones are given protection and a ticket out.
As usual, the pattern is repeated the other side of the coin, in the UK. Here the MP Michael Meacher wonders why Daniel Pearle's alleged killer is allowed 32 appeals and an indefinite postponement, while Scotland Yard and the French authorities were open mouthed to learn that Abu Qatada (another 911 mastermind) was sent into a protective 'custody' secret house in the North of England so that he could bypass the justice system and not be rendered for questioning in any country whatsoever. And then there is Able Danger....

Oh yes, then again, the British man who was appointed to investigate the prison abuse conveniently decides to commit suicide, while a prisoner who was to make a testimony about being tortured in a US jail, manages to escape (or did he get taken out in the rather nastier sense of the word?)

All these conveniences for the authorities and the worst terrorists, or the ones whose testimonies are not wanted, whilst good men languish without the hope of anything near to justice.

The same goes for torturers. The least paid of them, the ones who follow the orders, got jail time, whereas the CIA are off the hook because its their job to torture people, apparently. There is an awful lot of funny business going on. It is like God has deserted us and left the devil in control of everything.

IMHO it would be a gross insult to the US Military to say that these men simply escaped. Which leaves us with the only other conclusion, that someone or some people let them out.

AND I bet that the man who sold Pakistani's secrets about nuclear weapon-making, is not in jail. Which might help explain whose side Mussharif is on. Al Qaeda's side, I believe - whoever that is or whoever they are. Remember that those who get close to finding out, find themselves out of a job at the CIA or FBI. That is, after getting obstructed at their place of work, and shown up as an idiot in a place where only the FBI were and nobody else. E.g. John O' Neill and the briefcase story which was made known to the public through the NY Times, I believe, probably Judy Miller - but that is just a guess.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1859222,00.html
The Sunday Times November 06, 2005

Al-Qaeda woos recruits with nuclear bomb website
Uzi Mahnaimi and Tom Walker



AN Al-Qaeda website containing detailed instructions in Arabic on how to make nuclear, “dirty” and biological bombs has attracted more than 57,000 hits and hundreds of readers’ inquiries. Terrorism experts are warning that the site could be boosting the organisation’s appeal to would-be assassins in Britain and abroad.
The manual, posted on October 6 on a forum titled Al-Firdaws, or Paradise, contains 80 pages of instructions and pictures of kitchen bomb-making techniques. It is divided into nine lessons under the overall heading The Nuclear Bomb of Jihad and the Way to Enrich Uranium, and is dedicated as a “gift to the commander of the jihad fighters, Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, for the purpose of jihad for the sake of Allah”.



As well as describing how to make a nuclear bomb from enriched uranium — impossible for the layman — the manual explains how to make simple bombs that can blow up anything from electrical generators to petrol stations.

The site encourages its readers to look for materials such as radium, which it says is an “effective alternative to uranium and available on the market”. It is unclear who the author is or where he is based: he describes himself simply as “Layth al-Islam”, or the “Lion of Islam”, belonging to a group called “the Black Flags”.

“Fight them so that Allah will punish them at your hands and will put them to shame and will give you victory over them,” he writes, quoting the Koran. “Perhaps nuclear weapons represent a technology of the 1940s. However, the Crusaders, the allies of the Satan, Allah’s curse be upon them, insist on depriving the jihad fighters of the right to have these weapons.”

The site’s appeal is evident from the enthusiasm of its correspondents. One of the most recent, Mariyam al-Jihadiyya, writes: “God bless you for this precious topic . . . fight them, through your hands God tortures them . . . and heal the hearts of the faithful people.” Beneath she includes a couple of pictures for her hero. “I love you, Osama,” she writes.

Other users complain that not all the site’s links are activated, and several urge caution. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand,” writes one. For enthusiasts there are links to a mailing service that provides regular updates on bomb-making techniques.

Nuclear physicists were alarmed by the site. “Normally you just get generic principles, but this appears to be more like a proper instruction manual,” said John Hassard, reader in physics at Imperial College, London. “The thing about this website that is striking is that it is very particular. A lot of effort has been put into it.”

He said that while it was highly unlikely that amateur bomb-builders could get hold of fissile material, smuggling networks with access to nuclear materials from the break-up of the Soviet Union could use the information.

“It is a very real threat and one which we can’t afford to ignore,” he said. “I would say this is public enemy No 1.”

Experts on Al-Qaeda said the organisation appeared to be moving from a phase where it preached a fatwa permitting the use of weapons of mass destruction — issued two years ago — to one where it encourages its followers to produce both “dirty” bombs and smaller devices similar to those used in the London Tube attacks.

“Al-Qaeda strives to move directly from the stage of obtaining the WMD to the stage of using it,” said Matti Steinberg, an Israeli expert on the organisation. He said efforts by Al-Qaeda, whose members are Sunni Muslims, to produce a nuclear weapon also reflected its fear that Shi’ite Iran was on the brink of producing a bomb. Bin Laden wanted to “balance the efforts by Iran to obtain the first Shi’ite bomb by building the first Sunni one”.

While assessing the website’s influence on young British Muslims is difficult, terror experts believe it is an important potential recruiting tool.

Jeevan Deol, a terrorism analyst at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, said that while Al-Qaeda could not match western military capabilities and intelligence, its use of “cyberwarfare” helped redress the balance.

“They are using the web in a focused way for propaganda and recruiting,” said Deol. “Some jihadi kid in Leeds clicks on it and thinks, ‘Wow, 50,000 hits — we don’t see Osama on telly any longer but we’re big, we’re bad and extremely engaged in all these things’.”


Additional reporting: Widiane Moussa and Flora Bagenal

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/11/06/iraq.intel/

Prewar report doubted Iraq-al Qaeda tie
Senator: Document shows White House was 'deceptive'

Monday, November 7, 2005 Posted: 0345 GMT (1145 HKT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Democratic senator on Sunday said newly declassified information shows that Bush administration officials repeatedly accused Iraq of training al Qaeda terrorists long after interrogators concluded the source of the report was "intentionally misleading" captors.

Sen. Carl Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, cited declassified Defense Intelligence Agency documents to back up his account.

"This newly declassified information provides additional, dramatic evidence that the administration's prewar statements were deceptive," the Michigan Democrat said in a written statement.

"The underlying intelligence simply did not support the administration's repeated assertions that Iraq had provided chemical and biological weapons training to al Qaeda," said Levin, also a member of the Intelligence Committee.

Those assertions were given prominent play in the administration's arguments for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Top administration officials -- including President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of State Colin Powell -- all repeated them in the months before the invasion.

But the assertions were based on the word of a captive al Qaeda operative whom the Defense Intelligence Agency had previously concluded was probably lying to his interrogators.

In February 2002, a DIA report on the questioning of Ibn Shaykh al-Libi stated, "More likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers."

"Despite the DIA's findings, administration officials made numerous statements based on the detainee's claims that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al Qaeda," Levin said.

Levin also argued in 2004 that the Pentagon had hyped dubious intelligence linking Iraq to al Qaeda terrorist network in the months before the invasion.

His latest criticism comes as Democrats have launched a concerted effort to refocus public attention on the roots of the war, where the U.S. military's death toll climbed on Sunday to 2,047. (Full story)

Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he would not have supported the 2002 congressional resolution that authorized military action "knowing what I know now."

Rockefeller told CNN's "Late Edition" that al-Libi was "an entirely unreliable individual upon whom the White House was placing substantial intelligence trust."

He said Sunday's disclosure was another reason the Intelligence Committee needs to wrap up a promised investigation into how policymakers used intelligence data to push for war. The panel's initial probe focused on the quality of the intelligence and not how policymakers used it.

"That is a classic example of a lack of accountability to the American people," Rockefeller said.

Democrats closed the Senate to the public Tuesday afternoon to pressure the Intelligence Committee's chairman, Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, to move forward on the follow-up probe -- a move Republicans blasted as a stunt.

The Senate reopened after members agreed to appoint a bipartisan task force to assess the progress of the Phase 2 probe and report back by November 14.

Roberts told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that the panel has been working on the report "for a considerable amount of time."

"We have several working drafts that we will give to members as of this week," Roberts said.

The Democrats' pressure in the Senate followed the indictment of Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges including perjury and obstruction of justice.

Libby is accused of lying about the disclosure of the identity of a CIA officer whose husband had challenged a key assertion in the administration's case for war. (Full story)

Pentagon: Document 'out of context'
Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said Sunday that the DIA report Levin cited was a single document "out of context, without the analysis or any other indication as to how it may have factored in."

In an interview with CNN, he called its release "irresponsible and ironic, given the underlying allegation that this selected release is intended to address, namely someone's perception that intelligence was used selectively."

Top administration officials, including Bush himself, repeatedly asserted that Iraq was concealing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and could one day provide those weapons to terrorists.

"We have learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bombmaking, poisons and deadly gases," Bush said in a nationally televised speech from Ohio in October 2002.

"You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," Bush told reporters at the White House in September 2002.

Rice, now secretary of state, made the same claim in September 2002. And Powell included the allegation in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003.

But once a U.S.-led army had toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, none of the suspected weapons programs were found.

The independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks concluded in 2004 that there was no collaborative relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq, though some contacts between the two sides dated back to the early 1990s.

And in 2002, the declassified DIA report said: "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with Bush in Latin America Sunday that both Democrats and Republicans "came to the same conclusion" before the war -- "that Saddam Hussein was a threat and a threat that needed to be addressed."

"We welcome the opportunity to talk about the threat that Saddam Hussein and his region posed," McClellan said. "It was a brutal regime; it was an oppressive regime and the world is better off with him removed from power."

Sen. George Allen, a Virginia Republican, said the intelligence at the time raised fears that Iraq could have provided weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

"Recognize the mindset of this country and our leaders in this country that we got hit on 9/11, 2001, and we didn't want to sit back," said Allen, another Intelligence Committee member. "We needed to make sure we're proactive in trying to thwart and protect, thwart terrorist attacks and protect Americans."

CNN's Barbara Starr contributed to this report.

Al-Qaeda threatens Iraq mayhem unless US-led assault halted :

"The organisation has decided to give the apostate government and itsmaster 24 hours to end their campaign against the Sunni people. After that they will only see from us the worst and something that's going to make the earth tremble under their feet," warned the statement signed in the name of spokesman Abu Maisara al-Iraqi.
http://www.africasia.com/services/news/new...50.lrfi7k1q.php

http://tinyurl.com/7f649

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GK10Df02.html
COMMENTARY
Al-Qaeda's battle for hearts and minds
By Ehsan Ahrari

No one can claim that al-Qaeda is not watching the twists and turns of the debates related to global terrorism that are currently being waged in the United States and the Muslim world. The 9-11 Commission's report popularized the argument by recommending to the Bush administration that it must wage a war of ideas to win the hearts and minds of Muslims.

Al-Qaeda's chief theoretician, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has incorporated this concept in his own enduring campaign against the United States. He has been busy in the past few months publicizing al-Qaeda's perspectives to the Muslim world
and to the West in particular.

In this regard, one has to consider Zawahiri's recent appeal for aid for the victims of the massive earthquake in South Asia, and in particular Pakistan-administered Kashmir. There is clear urgency for help: more than 80,000 people have died, and many millions have been made homeless in the remote area.

The poor response of the international community to the greatest human tragedy in Pakistan's history is quite apparent. What is even more tragic is the tepid response of the Middle Eastern oil monarchies, whose treasuries are brimming. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait offered $100 million each, while Saudi Arabia offered $133 million. Kuwait went to the extent of publicizing its $500 million aid to Hurricane Katrina victims in the US, but comes up with a relatively measly $100 million for the victims of Kashmir.

Turkey has been an exception to the general miserly response of Muslim countries. Only one day after the earthquake, the government in Ankara responded by sending search and rescue teams and food and other aid to Pakistan. It followed up by sending $150 million in aid. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the first foreign dignitary to visit the earthquake-devastated area, where he observed, "My wish is this - the world is using resources for armaments, they should also put aside resources for such disasters."

The poor response of the international community to the victims of Kashmir was underscored by the United Nations saying that it had received only 27% of the $312 million of its flash appeal for quake relief - compared with 80% pledged within 10 days of a similar appeal to international donors after the tsunami of December 26.

The government of Pakistan's own response to this massive human tragedy has also been described as slow and inadequate. One leader of Pakistan-administered Kashmir stated, "It's a shame as the government on the other side [Indian-administered Kashmir] acted promptly and provided relief and rescue in all the affected areas ... People are angry here as they think Islamabad has double standards, even in handling natural disasters."

What about the Islamist organizations of Pakistan; how did they respond? The same Kashmir leader told Reuters, "The jihadi groups are more sincerely taking part in relief operations. Those groups, which were branded bad by the government, are no doubt doing well and will influence people's sympathy in the future."

A number of earthquake victims attested to this reality by stating that the only prompt help they have gotten has been from Islamist groups. (See Asia Times Online Waging jihad against disaster, October 20.) Even Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf agreed with the performance of the Islamist groups related to post-earthquake assistance.

Examine the above realities from the perspective of al-Qaeda's version of public diplomacy. Considering the publicity given by the Western media to all statements that al-Qaeda issues, Zawahiri's appeal for aid for Pakistani victims was heard all over the world.

The immediate danger that this appeal poses is to Musharraf's own regime. Here is a president who has cast the fate of his government by siding with President George W Bush's "war on terror". Then he started waging his own war on al-Qaeda and the Islamist/jihadi forces inside his country. Yet, from America's point of view, he has not done enough.

Secondly, in his own hour of dire need, at least the way he described it to the BBC, his government did not receive adequate assistance. According to Musharraf, the reason for such an inadequate Western response is that no Western victims were involved, as they were in the tsunami-related catastrophe.

In a number of Western countries, the rejoinder to Musharraf's criticism followed two general themes. First, the poor response has something to do with a general aid-related fatigue in the West, because the world has been experiencing a series of mega-human calamities. Second, a question is also being raised about why oil-rich Muslim states aren't coming to the rescue by creating about a billion-dollar aid mechanism, especially at a time when prices oil prices are so high.

Al-Qaeda is having a field day watching the community of nations perform so deplorably in regard to the human tragedy in Pakistan. It can, quite effectively, underscore three perspectives. First, that the illegitimacy of current Muslim governments in the wake of their failure to come to the rescue of a Muslim tragedy of epic proportions does not require any further debate, from the perspectives of al-Qaeda.

Second, the seeming lack of Western concern only underscores al-Qaeda's claim that the West does not really care abo